NASA’s Parker Solar Probe – first mission to ‘touch’ the Sun in the history of mankind – has been shifted to its launch pad. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, mankind’s first mission to ‘touch’ the Sun, has been moved to its launch pad and is set to take off at 3:33 am ET on Saturday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Parker Solar Probe will enter the orbit around the Sun and read its radiation from just less than 4 million miles away.
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The car-sized spacecraft is set to travel straight into the Sun’s atmosphere - corona - and will stay more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has ever gone before it, mainly due to the fact that it carries a Thermal Protection System to the spacecraft from the heat.
The mission will carry out its observation through the Corona and how its affect the near-Earth space and change our understanding of the biggest star completely.
The Parker Solar Probe carries several highly-innovative instruments to study the Sun and help the scientists answer long, unanswered questions about our star.
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The Parker Solar Probe has been a dream project for the scientists since decades, but the highly advanced technologies like the fault management system, solar array cooling system and the heat shield have been available recently to make this nearly impossible mission a reality.
The spacecraft will thoroughly study the corona – the region of the Sun only seen from Earth during total solar eclipses.
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